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Greater Minnesota Has Its Own Gun Problem

Plus Covid ain't over yet, medical marijuana wants in, and a local restaurant gets national attention in today's Flyover.

Photo by steve woods on Unsplash

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.

The Gun Deaths We Donโ€™t Hear About

Guns killed 570 Minnesotans last year, the highest rate of gun deaths in our state in 20 years. The rise in gun homicides, a serious concern, has been well-documented. Whatโ€™s less discussed is the rise in gun suicides, especially in Greater Minnesota. There were more than twice as many suicides committed with guns last year (393) as there were homicides (164), Christopher Ingraham at the Minnesota Reformer reports, looking at statistics recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while the homicide rate is greater in the Twin Cities metro, the suicide rate outside that area is shockingโ€”more than 200 of those suicides were committed outstate. In other words, nine out of every 100,000 Minnesotans outside the Twin Cities metro took their lives with a gun last year.

This is hardly a purely Minnesotan problem. Even before COVID, researchers were tracing the nationโ€™s decreasing life expectancy to a rise in โ€œdeaths of despairโ€ among white working-age Americans without four-year degrees. (The category includes suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver disease.) And considering that folks who think they have a future donโ€™t typically go around shooting one another, it doesnโ€™t seem like much of a stretch to call the homicides โ€œdeaths of despairโ€ as well.

Hi, No, the Pandemic Is Not Over

While our student loan balances are happier with Joe Biden than they were previously, we gotta say the old fella is really not cut out to discuss public health without the aid of a very carefully phrased message on a teleprompter. โ€œThe pandemic is over,โ€ the President announced on 60 Minutes last night. โ€œNot so fast,โ€ the sewage of the Twin Cities responds. Last Friday, Bring Me the News reports, the Metro Council released its latest wastewater sample data, an important measure of COVID-19 prevalence, and the viral load (lol, load) of COVID entering had risen by 36% since the prior week. A big contributor to that increase: Schools are back in session, and without masking policies this year. The omicron subvariant BA.5 remains dominant, but a tiny percentage of (another!) variant, BA.2.75, was located as well. While COVID death rates are down to the single digits here (with โ€œonlyโ€ 7 people dying a week), they were even lower last summerโ€”and remember what happened once we all went back inside.

Lawsuit: THC Legalization Is Screwing with Medical Marijuanaโ€™s Profit Margins

In 2015, when Vireo Health landed one of two contracts to provide medical marijuana in Minnesota, it was a big cash boon. If you were one of the lucky few to have a โ€œgreenโ€ card, youโ€™d probably be dropping a bundle at one of their Green Goods dispensaries. But now that we have accidental legal edibles, and pretty much every place in town can sell $8 Delta-9 packets, fewer people are milking the medical cash cow. And that, according to Vireoโ€™s lawsuit against the state, is discrimination. โ€œThe problem is that hemp-derived edibles that have recently been legalized in Minnesota do not have the same regulation, oversight, testing, and customer eligibility limitations as the medical cannabis-derived edibles sold by Vireo,โ€ the lawsuit states.

It doesnโ€™t sound like theyโ€™re trying to harsh anyoneโ€™s mellow, however. The lawsuit alleges that THC-derived edibles and their medical cannabis-derived edibles are โ€œchemically identical,โ€ and so they shouldnโ€™t be regulated differently from the โ€œBirthday Cake Indica Stoned Zoneโ€ gummies you get at the gas station down the store. Vireo isnโ€™t the only one losing money to unregulated gummies; some estimate that failing to tax edibles is costing Minnesota about $46 million this year.

Petite Leรณn Gets Some Big Recognition

The New York Times just released its list of the 50 best restaurants in America right now, and you better believe Petite Leรณn is on there. โ€œThe chef Jorge Guzmรกn was born and raised in the Yucatรกn, and that regionโ€™s cuisine animates a number of his arresting dishes, including al pastor pork collar, charred broccolini with mole verde, and ancho chile-black garlic marinated bavette steak with a bright piquillo pepper sauce,โ€ Brett Anderson writes of the south Minneapolis spot from Guzmรกn, Travis Serbus, and Benjamin Rients. Two Minneapolis restaurants landed on the list last year: Sooki & Mimi, from Ann Kim, who was just prominently featured on Chefโ€™s Table: Pizza, and Owamni, from Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson, the former of whom was just the subject of an extraordinarily long New Yorker profile. In other wordsโ€ฆ very fine company. โ€œThis team has been kicking ass since our doors opened for take out and they keep kicking ass!โ€ the restaurantโ€™s celebratory Insta post reads, and we couldnโ€™t agree more. Get the burger! Get the mussels! Get the stuffed piquillo peppers!